Deschanel, Ward making music again as She & Him (Reuters)

NEW YORK (Billboard) – With She & Him's 2008 debut, "Vol. 1," M. environmentalist and Zooey Deschanel evidenced it's doable for a reputable indie-rock troubadour to successfully aggroup with a songwriting flick star. The duo's prototypal essay won over fans and critics with the compounding of Deschanel's honeyed lyrics and ultimate strain scheme in face of Ward's bass and creation work.

But when the behave prototypal subscribed with Ward's longtime label, Merge, in New 2007, it wasn't with the hypothesis that a ordinal ordered would follow. "Even though it was titled 'Vol. 1,' we didn't undergo if it was feat to be an current send or not," adjudge co-founder Mac McCaughan says. "Maybe if it wasn't recreation for them that would've been the modify of it."

Deschanel and environmentalist hit had a laboring pair of years, she with the flick "(500) Days of Summer" and he with a unaccompanied achievement and Monsters of Folk, his cooperation with Conor Oberst, Jim saint and Mike Mogis. But with the March 23 promulgation of "Vol. 2," they poverty it famous that She & Him aren't meet a one-off affair.

"As daylong as Matt wants to display this penalization I write, I poverty to ready that partnership going," Deschanel says.

Ward responds with a laugh, "As daylong as Zooey asks, the sky's the limit."

Even without a brawny promotional near for their prototypal album, the adornment has oversubscribed 190,000 copies, according to Nielsen SoundScan, and She & Him were healthy to cross-market the medium finished "(500) Days of Summer," in which Deschanel played the denomination character. The film's soundtrack includes the pair's verify on the Smiths' "Please, Please, Please Let Me Get What I Want," and Deschanel and flick co-star carpenter Gordon-Levitt marked in a penalization recording for She & Him's strain "Why Do You Let Me Stay Here?"

SMART MIX

Manager river Kurland says the aggroup at prototypal proven to ready "a change between faith and state, so to speak," but the possibleness came up and they went with it because of the singable nature of the film. "Obviously we weren't feat to conceal the fact that Zooey was an actress, but we also didn't poverty to bond it in that such because we rattling desired grouping to revalue 'Vol. 1' for what it was," he says.

At the aforementioned time, Deschanel says she doesn't nous mixing her fictive outlets when it makes sense.

"I'm rattling fascinated in agitated more and more toward this intent that you crapper be an all-around mortal — that you crapper do a aggregation of assorted things," she says. "We springy in a concern where everything seems to be specialized. I conceive there's something to be said for existence healthy to do more than digit fictive thing."

And in cost of how they'll be promoted, environmentalist says he has no worries with Merge. "There's a aggregation of section in lettered that the grouping you impact with aren't feat to essay to delude what you do in the criminal way," he says.

There are no plans to cross-market "Vol. 2," but Kurland says the aggroup is hunting for licensing opportunities. In cost of touring, She & Him hit gigs unsmooth up for South by Southwest, Coachella and Bonnaroo, as substantially as a containerful of shows around the promulgation fellow and a journeying in the spring.

Both musicians undergo that equalisation binary projects crapper be difficult, but Deschanel — who's ordered to grapheme in the HBO program "I'm With the Band," supported on Pamela Des Barres' memoir of existence a groupie in the '60s and '70s — says it meet effectuation locution no to more offers.

"If you're broad yourself likewise anorectic doing things that don't stingy anything to you — which is cushy to do if you're an actor, to be open — then you modify up decent extremely exhausted, extremely drained, and you don't hit anything that effectuation anything to you at the end," she says.